If you’ve just watched Hereditary and you feel like your brain needs a moment to recall how the movie concluded, don't worry, you're not alone. By the time you reach the ending, it feels like everything has spiraled completely out of control. It's not that you have skipped an important part in the film. That is just how Hereditary is made, to puzzle you and leave you unanswered.
Ari Aster’s Hereditary has a way of sticking with you. It doesn’t explain everything clearly, and that’s part of what makes it so chilling. The final scenes are filled with strange symbols, cults, floating bodies, and a twist that can be hard to understand, even if you're paying close attention. So, let’s break it all down and try to make sense of what really happened at the end of this incredible film.
Spoilers ahead from Hereditary.
The cult, the demon, and Charlie's role
To understand the ending, we need to go back to the beginning. The movie starts with the death of Ellen, the grandmother. But Ellen was the leader of a secret cult that worshipped a demon named Paimon. Paimon is a real demon name taken from ancient texts, and in the movie, the cult’s goal was to bring him into the world in a proper male host.
This is where Charlie comes in. At first, it seems like the story is about her, especially since she has a strange connection to her grandma and displays unusual behavior. But Charlie was never meant to be the final host. Paimon needs a male body, and that’s why things begin to shift towards Peter, Charlie’s older brother. Charlie's spirit is essentially holding Paimon, and the cult's mission is to move that spirit into Peter.
By the time we reach the ending, we see that everything has been carefully planned by the cult. The family’s suffering, Annie’s breakdown, the death of Charlie, and the terrifying things happening in the house are all steps toward Peter becoming the vessel for Paimon. So when Peter jumps out of the window and wakes up, it’s no longer him. It’s Paimon, finally placed into the correct body.
The meaning behind Hereditary's final scene
In the last few minutes of the movie, we see Peter (or Paimon) follow a floating body into the treehouse. There, he finds people bowing to him, a headless statue with Charlie’s crown, and the bodies of his mom and grandma, also headless. It’s shocking and surreal, but it all fits into the cult’s ritual.
The headless bodies are part of the symbolism. In demonology, removing the head is like removing the old identity, making room for a new, higher being. So by removing the heads of Annie, Ellen, and Charlie, the cult shows their loyalty and sacrifice to Paimon.
When Joan, the cult member, places the crown on Peter and calls him Charlie, it might be confusing at first. But what she's doing is welcoming Paimon, who was in Charlie before, into his final body. So it’s not really Peter sitting on the throne. It’s the demon Paimon, now fully reborn. The cult is celebrating because their years of planning have finally worked.
This ending is so disturbing because it shows that the family never had a choice. From the very beginning, they were part of something much bigger and darker. Ellen manipulated everything to make sure Paimon would return, and in the end, she got what she wanted.